Nature Blog Network

By roughly a three-to-one margin, the blogosphere wants to hear about your personal life.

There are a few limitations to this study

Yes, I know 22 votes is not a representative sample of a community with >540 members. I know opportunistic recruitment is not reliable in the same way that a random sample is. I know that in the grand scheme of things, our poll tells us essentially nothing with any statistical rigor.

But since we have the information, and since 22 of you took the time to click an answer, let’s take a look at the data. What does it tell us? That at least some part of the blog-reading world prefers blogs with personality rather than just the facts. Yes, there are several blogs at the top of the NBN which are very much scientific and very little personal. But there’s also Birdchick, Julie Zickefoose, and Pure Florida, three of the most personable blogs you could find anywhere, right on the front page of the toplist.

If the only reason to blog were to get large numbers of readers or make a lot of money, none of us would be nature blogging – we’d all have sites devoted to weight loss, gambling, pharmaceuticals, or porn. (If you have one of these, to pay for your birding habit or photo equipment, that’s personal info you don’t need to share – at least with me.) Since in general we don’t, and since there are readers for both highly factual and highly personal writing, why not do what you like and do best? Every time I’ve navel gazed about my own blog, that’s the advice I’ve been given. I think it’s solid advice to follow, and I pass it on to you.

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The next two Thursdays are major holidays in the US and elsewhere, and I don’t expect that there will be a lot of blog traffic those days or even any time the next two weeks. I’m awarding myself and you a semi-holiday, in that I may have a couple of short posts or polls, but nothing that will require any of us to do too much thinking the rest of the year. Have a happy holiday season, whatever you’re celebrating! I’ll look forward to seeing you again next year.